Apps to Help You Get Healthy, and remain healthy, in the New Year

Every year we all wind up making a list of things we want to accomplish in the upcoming year. We want to lose weight, gain weight, maintain weight, sleep better, save more money, make more friends, eat healthier, etc. Often times, however, we wind up not sticking to those resolutions we made. The University of Scranton conducted research and found that out of the 41% of people that make New Years Resolutions, only 8% actually stick to them and achieve the goals they. Since we all are basically glued to our phones, here’s a few apps that can help you stick to those resolutions.

Resolution: Weight Loss

Weight loss is one of the top resolutions that many make each year. Often people look for quick ways to lose the weight or they feel like they’re not seeing the changes they want.

Snapsie is an app that allows you to take before and after pictures and pictures in between. You can set reminders on your phone to remind you of when your next progression picture will be taken. And when all is said and done, or you just want a daily reminder for how far you’ve come, you can put all of your pictures into a short video that will show off the progress you made. Often, we tend to not continue with weight loss plans if we feel like the change isn’t visible, this app will help to remind you of just how far you’ve come.

Nike Training Club

This app is a personal favorite of mine. It allows you to choose if you want to lose weight, build endurance, or maintain weight. It then lets you set your own workout schedule. All workouts are free and included in the app. Everything from yoga to kickboxing is including. Of course, for some of these workouts, you’ll need equipment like hand weights or a medicine ball. The good thing is since you do these from home you can select what equipment you have access to so you’ll get the perfect routine for you.

Resolution: To eat healthily

Eating healthy, all by itself, can help you lose weight. There have been tons of people that have lost weight simply by changing the way they eat.

Fooducate

Fooducate is another one of my personal favorites. You can track your weight loss, join their community and find healthy recipes. The main reason I use it is to scan foods while I’m in the market. It grades each food item scanned and gives it a letter grade. After scanning, it tells you why the product was given that letter grade and you can even check out what others think about it, especially if it’s a product you want to try out. If the product isn’t in the app, all you have to do is take a picture of the front of the box, the nutritional information, and the ingredient list. Then they’ll process it and let you know when it’s been uploaded and you can check out the food grade for it.

MyPlate

MyPlate is an app that allows you to track your eating habits throughout the day. You can input your current weight and your goal weight and it gives you an idea of the daily number of calories you should eat. You can input what you ate for each meal and it’ll let you know if you ate over the recommended number of calories, if you were below it, or if you were right on track.

Resolution: More Sleep

For a lot of us, sleep isn’t always a priority. We often don’t get enough sleep. Adults are supposed to get anywhere from 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night. However, studies have shown that 35.3% of adults get less than 7 hours of sleep. Lack of sleep can cause a wide variety of issues. If you have an iPhone, then you already know that your phone does include a timer for sleep. It lets you put in what time you’re going to bed and when you need to get up. It lets you know exactly how many hours of sleep that is but it also lets you know how long you were active on your phone and exactly how many hours you actually got each night. However, some do use supplementary apps to help track their sleep progress.

Pillow

Pillow is the ultimate sleep tracking app. It allows you to set the time you want to go to bed and when you want to wake up. While you’re sleeping, it tracks the quality of your sleep. It lets you know when you had the deepest sleep, the lightest sleep and when you were awake. You can also take power naps and recovery naps with the app as well.

Calm

Calm is another app I love to use. I use it to help me sleep at night. It has a variety of things you can do with it. You can use it for meditation if you need to focus, relax, or sleep. When you select the sleep mode, you can listen to sleep stories. It turns your phone’s screen off, so you won’t be disturbed by the light, and lets you listen to a story. The narrator has an extremely soft voice so you can fall asleep faster.

Resolution: Mental Health or Self-care

Often times we don’t have time to worry about how we’re feeling or why we’re feeling the way we’re feeling. It’s estimated that about 16 million adults have had at least one depressive episode in their life. Mental health is not usually a resolution many people make but it’s one more people should consider.

Talk Life

Often times we just need someone to talk to about the problems we have, and we don’t want them to know us personally. Talk Life connects you with a support group. You can sign up to listen to others that may need your help or you can sign up and seek the help yourself. It’s a safe place to discuss what is going on in your life with those that will understand and won’t judge you for it.

Daylio – Journal, Diary, Moods

Daylio does just what it says. It helps you to track your mood. If you’re someone that doesn’t really care to do a bullet journal then this app can help you to see when you’ve had lows and highs. You can input your feelings for each day and if you are seeing a therapist then this app can help you keep track of those feelings until your next appointment.

Calm Harm

Calm Harm is an app that is meant to help those who have the urge to self-harm. It provides different activities in order to help those that want to self-harm resist or manage their self-harming behaviors.